Baltimore Scores With New HQ Hotel

During a fam trip on sept. 12- 14, the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA) showed off its newly opened headquarters hotel: the 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel - where rooms overlook beautiful Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Connected to the Baltimore Convention Center via an enclosed skybridge, the $300-million hotel caters to the meetings and convention market by offering the city's first formal room-block agreement. Combined with typical room blocks offered by neighboring hotels, there will be more than 1,000 committable rooms attached to the convention center, which is located within walking distance of Baltimore's popular Inner Harbor and National Aquarium.

The Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel features 10 hospitality suites with balconies overlooking the ballpark and 60,000 square feet of meeting space. Among the hotel's many eco-friendly features is a 32,000-square-foot living roof that creates greater energy efficiency by keeping the hotel cool. And next year, Baltimore will welcome its first LEED- certified hotel when the Fairfield Inn & Suites opens just a few blocks from the Inner Harbor.

Indeed, hotel development abounds in and around the Inner Harbor. In Harbor East, a 256-room Four Seasons Hotel & Residences will open along the waterfront in 2010. In trendy Fells Point, the Harbor Point development will include a new Westin Hotel, opening in 2011. Two new Hyatt-branded hotels are planned just one block from the Inner Harbor as part of Cityscape, a mixed-use development project. The two hotels - a Hyatt Place (175 rooms) and an extended-stay Hyatt Summerfield Suites (125 rooms) - will wrap around the Brookshire Suites hotel in the business district of downtown.

Over the past four years, Baltimore has experienced an impressive 81-percent growth in room-night bookings. BACVA hopes that the completion of the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel along with the hotel properties coming online in the next few years will enable the city to continue its momentum and attract even bigger meetings. To learn more about Baltimore, visit www.baltimore.org.

Peggy Swisher is managing editor of Convene.

PhoCusWright Forum Clicks on Online Travel

The online travel marketplace - open 24/7, 365 days a year - can be compared to bees swarming in innumerable quantities, Philip C. Wolf, president and CEO of PhoCusWright Inc., told attendees at an Analyst Forum sponsored by the travel- industry research firm at the Grand Hyatt New York in New York City on Sept. 10. With millions of consumers worldwide clicking millions of times on millions of sites, and with the number of people who book travel online rising, succeeding in the industry means that "You have to be good at technology," Wolf said. "It's not an option not to be good." But even as businesses are compelled to hone their technology skills, winning in the marketplace will mean avoiding skills-focused decision-making and focusing on solving customer problems. "Everything going on today technically," Wolf said, "will be redone again."

The half-day forum gathered more than 60 attendees to hear PhoCus-Wright's latest research on topics such as the impact of social media on travel decision-making (destination Web sites are more influential than travel review sites, but nothing trumps the recommendations of family and friends) and the outlook for traditional travel agencies (whose 2009 bookings are projected to decline to 33 percent of the market share). The event also gave attendees - who represented technology-solutions providers, DMOs/CVBs, advertising agencies, financial services companies, and other travel companies - the chance to discuss the findings with PhoCus-Wright's analysts and each other.

PhoCusWright, which annually hosts conferences in the United States and abroad, launched the Analyst Forum "as a way of providing an interactive and intimate setting for PhoCusWright analysts to connect with our customers," said Vice President of Research Lorraine Sileo. She said the company plans to continue the forum quarterly in New York City, featuring research and analysis on a variety of travel, tourism, and hospitality topics.

Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene.

Linking In at HSMAI

Capitalizing on the CUTthrough-the-clutter approach of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) 19th Annual Affordable Meetings National - held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., Sept. 10-11 - was keynote speaker Allen Blue, co-founder and vice president of product strategy for LinkedIn. Blue noted that meeting professionals and Web 2.0 applications like LinkedIn share an interest in bringing people together to create "powerful professional experiences."

By the end of this year, LinkedIn will roll out a new events platform that will allow its 27 million registered users to create individual homepages for their meetings, and have discussions around them. "Can we build a community of attendees around an event," Blue asked, "that lasts beyond the event - all the way until next year's event?" Test the application by posting your meeting announcements at http://events.linkedin.com.

Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.